Gentle guidance is good marketing

Recently, Mass Mutual launched a new set of ads that they’ve been describing as “thoughtful.” When was the last time you heard a marketing campaign that was “thoughtful?” Aggressive, creative, innovative, suave, - sure, marketing comes up with every adjective possible, but "thoughtful" could mean you actually want people to think about what’s been sold.

That, I suppose, could be dangerous.

In reality, Mass Mutual’s newest campaign is much more than thoughtful. It’s smart. Taking back the notion of what really counts in life from those annoying MasterCard “priceless” ads, these spots show people making what are, subjectively, good decisions in their everyday lives. According to Forbes,

The campaign is an extension of the company's core position and tagline -- "We'll help you get there(sm)" -- that underscores the company's understanding of the real, practical issues consumers face when it comes to life insurance and retirement, and positions MassMutual as the company that helps consumers take the steps that are right for them.

Creative executions pose the philosophical and practical question: "What is the sign of a good decision?" The decisions captured in the executions are all real, almost everyday scenarios, like cutting short a fishing excursion to head for safe harbor at the first sign of a storm. Like real life financial decisions, the scenarios depicted all have consequences that can affect people beyond just the decision-maker. The campaign illustrates the value and confidence that come with making sound decisions for individuals and families, small business owners or plan managers at major corporations.

It doesn’t hurt that the ads have great soundtracks behind them (Bob Dylan on the one where a father decides to move his top-of-the-skyscraper-amazing-city-view office to his home after looking at a picture of his young daughter). Or that MassMutual puts a lot of family-friendly policies to the test in its own workplace. They've also sponsored a two-part documentary on PBS about retirement decisions and financial stability.

From a retail and advertising standpoint, engendered trust and a sense of guidance are some of the most difficult things to “sell” to customers. Not to mention that the company aims to do this at a time when established financial institutions are in trouble one way or another. The emphasis on gentle guidance is what works here – moving away from the hard sell to the simple straightforward assurance is the right move, especially for a company that could, in fact, play on people's anxieties in an anxious time. You can bet this approach won’t be appearing all over the advertising landscape, but it might not hurt for companies to stop and consider what exactly they have to offer that would make consumers choose one brand, one company over another. Brand loyalty is, of course, better if it’s actually earned.

Tags: advertising, branding, retail

Mad Men and mind reading

AMC’s series Mad Men has been generating a lot of positive attention from critics lately. It’s a slick show set in the 1960s that follows the experiences of Madison Avenue Advertising Executives and the people around them. The New York Times review captures what everyone likes about it:

The advertising executives, who called themselves “mad men,” were at the front of the consumer rat race, hypnotizing the American buyer with huckster campaigns created off-the-cuff in smoky meeting rooms or on a cocktail napkin at El Morocco…. The advertising business was flush, blissfully unburdened by aging readerships, failing newspapers, DVRs or the Internet, and only barely accountable to the federal government or public opinion.

That kind of unbridled freedom is the series’s one speck of sentiment, evoking nostalgia for a time before the current audience-knows-best rule of business, in which viewers vote on who gets to become a pop star, publishers ask readers to choose their authors, and politicians ask viewers to decide what issues they should discuss, as is the plan in next week’s live Democratic debate, a joint project between CNN and YouTube. When Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the suave creative director of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, receives consumer data from the research director that suggests there is no way to avoid addressing Americans’ concerns about the health risks of smoking, Don coolly drops the report in his wastepaper basket.

While some of the big agencies are still run by a few iconic personalities, for the most part it's quite different today. While at one time the industry might have been enthralled with some new creative campaign, data, analytics and big business practices grab the lion's share of headlines these days. Case in point: Brandweek reports that its parent company, Nielsen is partnering with Mindset Media to develop a method of tying consumer behavior (actual purchases) to behavioral data (personality mapping). The idea is to expand Nielsen’s ability to target types of consumers beyond surface demographic information. Retailers may know who buys what, but it’s hard to link that information with good answers to the “why” question.

Personality profiling is nothing new – and certainly the rise of the psychological mindset was important to advertising in the 50s and 60s, too. But today, agencies and retail companies adore it even though everyone admits it’s not an exact science and requires a fair amount of interpretation. But what’s most interesting about this announcement is Nielson’s attempt to link personnas with actual purchasing behavior -- people who allow Nielson into their home get to scan their purchases and then match their behavior against personality tests. On one level, this is good multi-method research, attempting to link actions and ideas. On another level, it’s based on a rather shaky premise, that personality is fixed, measurable, and drives consumption.

It’s not clear that today’s ad campaigns have a better fix on the human imagination than those Mad Men of the 1960s. Neither group really knows how people make decisions. The only research that could actually show this is long term ethnographic work, watching the same people shopping over a long period of time. Reacting to the Nielson news, Russell Jones from AlixPartner put it well when he said:

"The real question in my mind is this: How does it help me make branding decisions any better than the information I used to have? It doesn't tell me who I should target, although it tells me who responds to various brands."

It’s not clear what exactly Nielson and Mindset Media will find out. But I can tell them one thing: whoever came up with the retro-lighter package design for the Mad Men DVD boxed set was right on target.

Tags: retail, branding, advertising

Safeway's plan to target kids has parents asking "What's up, Doc?"

When my kids were young, we used to have a yearly event called Bad Food Weekend. One of us would take the kids to the supermarket and buy all the foods we saw advertised on television in between and blended in to the Saturday morning cartoons. We’d sample everything from fruit snacks that spurted out blue goo to cereals whose main ingredients were sugar and chemicals (with a vague reference to grains), to curly cheese doodles that turn your hands orange for a day. Usually by Saturday afternoon the girls had decided that 90% of the stuff was disgusting and one parent or the other was asked to make “a real meal.” Unfortunately, one year some nieces and nephews participated in the event, never reached the same gross-out point, and continued to ask for Sugar Coated Marshmallow Goodness in a Box for months afterward. My sister never forgave me -- I’m sure she’s sending her now-in-college son care packages full of carrots and whole wheat muffins just to counteract any lingering effects of that weekend long ago.

It’s easy to alarm parents (especially mothers) about getting kids to eat healthy foods. No surprise, as there’s more than a hundred years of "expert" advice – from the government, social service agencies, scientists, nutritionists, politicians, and of course, food companies --- telling women how to feed their families. And now, with fears of a fat nation starting in kindergarten, salmonella in your tomatoes, and Ronald McDonald as an exercise guru, the level of anxiety that must go into every meal is profound. Food vigilance is an around-the-clock job. In the last ten years, the obesity epidemic rhetoric has gotten fierce, starting with scientists at the Centers for Disease Control showing color coded maps of a creeping wave of fatness across the USA to Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me for kids. Whether you blame sedentary lifestyles, an out-of-control food industry, a lack of grocery stores and fresh produce in poor urban and rural areas, or parents (moms, really) who don’t make home cooked meals, it’s hard to ignore the statistics about type 2 diabetes in American children. Whether any of this warrants the label “epidemic,” there’s no question that the food industry knows it needs to start selling as much function as fun in their product lines.

So, it’s no surprise that Safeway, which like many supermarkets, food companies, and fast food chains, has launched a health kids set of meals and food products designed to ease parental guilt. Not a bad thing, you think, especially since one major complaint is that families do need guidance as to what counts as nutritional and healthy food. But unwilling to leave well enough alone, the new line will be packaged with Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Warner Brothers cartoon gang. According to Promo Magazine,

Warner Bros. chairman-CEO Barry Meyer said the deal is a way to turn its well-known cartoon characters into "ambassadors of health and fitness." He said the partnership "allows us to utilize the Looney Tunes characters' enduring popularity with kids and teens to promote a lifestyle choice that's healthier for them."

I wish I’d come across this story when I was writing the post about unbelievably bad marketing strategies, because it tops all the ones I’d mentioned. Like Sears hooking up with LL Cool J, there are some retail identities and pop culture items that really should be kept in separate rooms, locked away from one another. Otherwise we’ll end up with some crazy public service ads with the round green hero Shrek, (who’s been a fast food toy at least twice) promoting exercise. Oh wait, it’s been done.

(So do you think they'll use Porky Pig to promote the Soy Bacon Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich?)

To distinguish this campaign from the last thirty years of cartoon characters splashed across every imaginable kind of junk food, Bugs and his buddies are now exclusively featured on the Eating Right Kids line of food. Because Daffy, Taz, and Bugs are free of all that crass commercialism. Right?

Th-th-th-th-that’s all Folks….

Tags: branding, advertising, retail

When the brand isn't enough

Following up on Annie's post yesterday about when brands matter (and specifically brand packaging, in that particular case), I came across this article at Media Buyer Planner that suggests that under the right economic circumstances, the "luxury" aspect of a name brand may outweigh the potential value that habitual buyers place on the brand. To wit:

A sizeable 42 percent of consumers say they have given up favorite food brands because of rising prices and economic concerns, according to a study from Information Resources, Inc. that shows the lagging economy is driving a dramatic move back to basics and a reversal of decades-long trends for convenient and healthier foods, writes MarketingCharts.

Though changes in shopping and purchase behavior vary based on life stage and presence of children, those with lower-incomes report being the hardest hit (see chart):

• Roughly half of all consumers with incomes less than $55,000 per year say they have trouble affording the groceries they need.
• Nearly a quarter of those earning between $55,000 and $99,000 also say so.
• Among those with incomes over $100,000, 16 percent report having trouble.

As a result, consumers are increasing purchases of basic ingredients and meal components, reducing restaurant spending and decreasing purchases of “non-essentials” (see table):

• 53 percent of consumers report that they are cooking from scratch more now than they were six months ago.
• About 59 percent say they are buying fewer single-serving products.
• 55 percent say they are buying fewer prepared meals.
• 52 percent say they are buying fewer organic products.
• Stores are seeing a resurgence in sales of frozen foods, perishables, and “center-store” items.
• Private-label products show strong gains, with 50 percent of consumers saying they have stepped up their spending on such products in the last six months.

Despite America's love affair with food, at a certain point the economic pain becomes such that items that were once thought of as essential get reclassified as not really necessary, and thus, luxuries that can be cut back on.

What does that mean for the grocer or food retailer? Well, it depends on how they're handling their product segmentation, and who their target customers are. Obviously those catering to the upper-middle class will be hurt less, as fewer of these people have (so far) reported having any problems. That means they probably haven't cut back on luxury spending yet (or, more accurately, they haven't needed to reclassify brand-name food item purchases as luxuries yet). For the rest, though, the news might be more sobering. One possible exception is grocers with strong private label brands. For a lot of these guys, their private label is becoming a high-margin and increasingly upscale brand that can stand head-to-head with more established name brands while still offering strong value to the consumer. As consumers continue to tighten their belts (figuratively), expect to see more of them hold off on tightening their belts (literally) by trading brand loyalty and perceived brand value for the bona fide value that high-quality private label brands can offer (note that crappy off-brand goods probably won't get a boost in this case, which is as it should be, if you ask me).

Tags: branding, private label, retail

Mythical authenticity: retromarketing anew

When my kids were younger, we used to get tons of toy catalogs in the mail. One was called “Back to Basics,” and it was obviously aimed at Baby Boomer parents, with re-issued toys from the 50s and 60s, like Flexible Flyer wagons, wooden blocks and Tinker Toys. The slogan, “they do make them like they used to!” appealed to that generation of parents, who may or may not have actually hauled a red wagon around their yard, but yearned to make that kind of idealized childhood possible for their own kids.

When done successfully, especially with an already sentimental demographic, nostalgia sells. Retrobranding is not new – notice all those VW Beetles on the road? – but some companies are counting on a deeper affinity for brands from a not-too-distant past. Nostalgia is too simple a term to describe what’s going on here.

According to last week’s New York Times, one company, River West Brands is entirely devoted to acquiring and re-establishing certain brands, packaged in a reinvention of their original design. Some of the products -- notably Brim coffee, Underalls, and Salon Selective Shampoo – are not necessarily things that people still want or need (Brim is an instant decaf, for example, in an age where real coffee has morphed into a whole host of status symbols) Rather, Paul Earle, company founder, claims that the past experience invoked by these brands can be put to use generating interest and loyalty to newer incarnations of similar products.

Think of “brand memory,” as something more than firsthand knowledge: the taste, the appearance, or even just the advertising slogans are familiar even to people who may not have ever used the product on a regular basis. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai famously reminds us that things (as well as people) have a history and a biography. Interestingly, this memory doesn’t have to be 100% accurate, it just has to tap into something that seems collective -- something lots of people can easily relate to. My daughters love the Tootsie Pop commercial with Mr Owl who counts to three before he can’t stand it and bites to the tootsie roll center. Is the commercial from the 1970s that good? Or timeless? Or is it the grainy edge to the animation? Or the fact that their parents stop dead in their tracks and say out loud, “One, Ta-whoo, Threee,” along with the owl? Embarassingly, it’s probably a bit of each.

Advertising campaigns have certainly played on nostalgic content before, but an existing narrative storyline of a product is a rich vein to tap. It’s the same reason why fairy tales, myths, and legends engage people who never lived in Bavaria or ancient Greece. They create a sense of belonging, of being part of a larger story beyond our individual lives. Marketers work hard at creating “backstories” for products – the revival of a retro-brand, carrying history in its DNA saves the marketer a whole host of time and energy. The Times cites recent research in The Journal of Customer Behavior:

Retromarketing is not merely a matter of reviving dormant brands and foisting them on softhearted, dewy-eyed, nostalgia-stricken consumers,” they asserted. “It involves working with consumers to co-create an oasis of authenticity for tired and thirsty travelers through the desert of mass-produced marketing dreck.

Now, I’m cynical enough to know when we’re being sold a tall tale, especially one rooted in the 1950s. But I’m also aware that authenticity is as much an invention as is nostalgia. Creating authenticity is what culture’s all about – and in consumer culture, companies invent rich worlds for their products. If they do it well, the story becomes real (it's almost like the marketing version of The Velveteen Rabbit).

Here’s my big question, though: how do we know which brands are worth reviving? Take Postum, which, despite being loved by my 80-year-old mother and a whole lot of Mormons, is an acquired taste at best, and is easily replaced by a good brewed decaf latte or even chai-in-a-box!

Is Postum interesting or cool enough to be Americana? My vintage Mr. Bubble and Spam t-shirts evoke a whole world of comments. There’s even a new line of Oscar Mayer wear for teens. The difference is that these brands are not yet defunct – and everybody’s got a story to go with these products (remember, when it comes to brand memory, it doesn’t matter if it’s real, overheard, or even made up, as long as everyone agrees on the "memory").

It’s the ability to invent or tap into a story behind the brand that makes the brand valuable even long after the products have been removed from the shelves. I for one believe foods are the best bet because they resonate in collective memory both visually and physically. Taste and memory defy science and yet we are learning more and more about the way they’re tied.

We may have to wait a few years to see if Underalls and Eagle snacks return as part of the consumer vernacular. Until then, I’ll be on eBay, looking for a Tootsie pop t-shirt for my daughter and Postum for my mom.

Tags: branding, marketing

Tommy experiments with a new kind of retail TV

While much has been made of major brands launching (or at least testing) in-store TV networks, Tommy Hilfiger has decided to take a different direction and launch their own branded content channel -- on the Internet. Now obviously Internet video channels are nothing new, and in fact some consumer products companies have been trying their hand at branded video channels for a while (does Bud.tv ring a bell? No? Yeah, that's been the big problem). But according to this little blurb at PROMO Magazine, "Tommy Hilfiger has launched TommyTV in collaboration with Sony BMG to present live concert performances online from the ongoing Hilfiger Sessions series along with archived footage of past performances."

Of course, a bunch of live performances isn't going to gather a huge and loyal audience. No, for that the company has decided to turn up the mix, with, "exclusive artist interviews and backstage footage from intimate concert settings around the world." Additionally, "Hilfiger Auditions section will let aspiring musical artists upload videos of themselves and compete for a shot at stardom on a platform intended to draw music industry executives and casual Web surfers." While user-generated content isn't a 100% sure-fire way to grab and hold an audience or build a fanbase, you can't deny that it worked for YouTube, and gained a huge following when user-generated commercials were run during the 2007 Superbowl. And in fact, the company has been savvy enough to partner with the big user-generated video sites, noting that, "TommyTV branded channels on YouTube and Joost will feature concert clips to draw surfers to the Web site. Clips will also be accessible on MySpace and Facebook. Sony BMG’s myplay music network will feature pre-roll videos and banner ads intended to push traffic to TommyTV.com."

On the one hand, it shouldn't be rocket science to create a modestly successful video website. Populate it with enough A-grade content that can't be found elsewhere, foster growth via user submissions and the usual bevy of social media technologies, and all the while promote the brand on other channels and in other media. But I don't quite understand what the company hopes to gain for their effort. Tommy's image has changed significantly in the few decades that it has existed, as has its target audience. That having been said, it doesn't strike me that having a video channel - even a reasonably successful one (and let's face it, that's the best they can possibly hope for) will do much to spread their message, build their brand image, or attract new potential customers.

Tags: retail TV, branding

Experience design is not about brand experience

There's a good post (and even better comments) at Adaptive Path focusing on the difference between experience design and brand experience, and why so many people relate the two (when, the author suggests, they don't have anything to do with each other). The main thrust of his argument is basically that the word brand, "will always be about the impression companies want to make, and are by their nature an 'inside-out' proposition — a company figures out its brand and what it means, and does what it can to communicate or otherwise impart that message to people. Brand always starts with the company." On the other hand, "experience... needs to be about the people. What do they want to accomplish, achieve, do? For experience to succeed, it must start with the person, and from there, impress upon the company. 'Experience' is outside-in."

The inside-out versus outside-in concept fits well with my own attempts to figure out why retail marketers do the things that they do. For private label companies, the brand is everything: it's the stores, it's the people, it's the merchandise. But as the Adaptive Path post suggests, focusing on the brand would yield a totally "outside-in" approach, which wouldn't produce a very good experience for the average customer. It might be attractive, visually appealing, and so on, but wouldn't do a very good job of focusing on the customer's needs.

On the other hand, retailers that sell merchandise from multiple brands have a different problem, since they have to balance their own brand with the brands of all of their suppliers. The best retailers recognize the problem and try to adopt the "outside-in" experience approach that the article talks about, realizing that otherwise, they'd just be competing for attention with all of the "inside-out" branded goods.

How these realizations translate into actual design elements and innovations is different for every retailer (or at least that would explain how multiple retailers in the same category can have vastly different but still generate pretty good experiences).

Tags: store experience, experience design, branding, retail media

Xanadu mega-mall redefines retail sponsorships

The Xanadu Meadowlands mega-mall, when it finally opens some time in 2008, will be unique for several reasons. For one, it will be one of the biggest malls in the country (and certainly the biggest in the area). For another, it will be located along the extremely high-traffic segment of I95 in NewJersey close to the New York metro area. It will house the country's first indoor ski slope. And it will be built for branding from the ground-up.

According to this article in Advertising Age, the mall's owners, Colony Capital have maximized the number of marketing-related revenue streams from the project, from providing advertising opportunities on one of a dozen large-format outdoor electronic displays to making deals with up to five "presentation partners," who will be allowed to lend their name to a specific zone within the mall (imagine the "Cosmo GIRL! retail accessories wing", or maybe the "Coca-Cola Food Court"). While the idea seems to be just bizarre enough to be plausible, as Dave Yacullo, Director of Omnicom Group's Outdoor Media Group in New York notes, "it's really going to come down to how they can parlay those sponsorships into meaningful opportunities that would build the brand and move product."

Tags: Xanadu, Meadowlands, electronic billboards, out-of-home advertising, branding, naming

Flogging your brand at security checkpoints

I'm not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, you've got to give these people credit for thinking of a clever way to turn bland, unsold space into a profit center. But on the other hand, as a consumer (and frequent traveler), I don't know if I'm going to have positive associations with any brands advertised during the agony of going through an airport security checkpoint.

The company's website claims that their products improve the checkpoint experience, according to ongoing trials that they've been running at Los Angeles' LAX, certainly one of my least-favorite airports, and the system has been approved for use by the TSA (whatever that entails).

Tags: out-of-home advertising, airport advertising, branding